Moon River Brewing Company

The story

The building on West Bay Street that housed the Moon River Brewing Company began life as the City Hotel. Eleazer Early put it up in 1821 on a lot his wife had bought four years before. It is described as Savannah's first hotel, and it did more than lodge travelers: the city's first branch of the U.S. Post Office operated there, and so did an office of the Bank of the United States.

The guest list was impressive. Winfield Scott, celebrated for the War of 1812, stayed there, as did the Marquis de Lafayette and the U.S. Navy's first three commodores. The naturalist John James Audubon lodged for six months while he tried to find buyers for his books of wildlife drawings.

The hotel also saw a documented killing. On August 10, 1832, Dr. Philip Minis shot James Jones Stark dead in the bar of the City Hotel. Minis was later tried for murder and acquitted.

In 1851 Peter Wiltberger acquired the hotel, renovated it and, to draw customers, put a live lion and lioness on show. The last guest left in 1864, shortly before General William Tecumseh Sherman's army reached Savannah, and the hotel closed for good. One source, Legends of America, adds that the building was used after the Civil War to nurse yellow fever patients, but no other source confirms this.

Around 1900 the former hotel became a lumber and coal warehouse, then general storage as coal fell out of use. In the 1960s it was refitted as an office supply store with a large printing press. Hurricane David ripped off the roof in 1979 and put that business out. The shell stood empty until a renovation began in 1995 that turned it into a brewpub with a restaurant, bar and brewing equipment; the brewery itself dates from 1999. Moon River Brewing Company poured its last beers on June 16, 2024; financial trouble was reportedly behind the closure.

The legend

Moon River was a fixture of Savannah's ghost-tour circuit, and several distinct spirits are attached to it. Only one has a dated event behind it, the 1832 shooting of James Stark; almost none of the rest can be traced to a dated early account.

A poem on the Visit Savannah site tells of a gambler named James Stark, shot after insulting a doctor it calls Doctor Minus. Ghost tours vary the location, placing it on the staircase, in the billiard room or near the kitchen doors, though the record puts the killing in the bar. Those variations come from weak sources and should be treated with caution.

Legends of America describes three more presences. A spirit nicknamed "Toby" is said to be hostile, mocking whoever ventures down to the lower level. A woman in old-fashioned clothes is said to stand at the top of the stairs and glare at patrons. Children, sometimes linked to the yellow fever epidemic, are described as the spirits seen most often. Reports include being bumped or prodded by an unseen hand and glimpsing figures in halls and rooms. One line of the same poem says the renovations are never complete; the further claim is that workers found it difficult to stay on the upper floors. Ghost tours have also spoken of "over 60 murders" in the old hotel, a figure no source supports.

The legend is largely a product of television. The Ghost Hunters team (TAPS, on Sci Fi) visited for a Halloween special that aired on October 31, 2005, pairing Moon River with Savannah's Sorrel-Weed House. Ghost Adventures followed in season 2, episode 7, aired July 17, 2009, presenting Savannah as one of the most haunted cities in the country. The building later appeared on BuzzFeed Unsolved: Supernatural in 2018 and on the Travel Channel's Most Terrifying Places in 2019, in the episode "Ship of Anguished Spirits." No skeptical investigation is known, and the claims about yellow fever victims and dozens of murders remain unverified.

What remains today

The former City Hotel still stands on Bay Street. With the brewpub closed since June 2024 and its website redirecting elsewhere, the interior is no longer open to customers, and the building's future is unclear.

Visiting

Moon River Brewing Company is closed, so there is currently no way to go inside; check whether a new business has opened before you plan a visit. Do not try to enter the building. You can still see the exterior from the public sidewalk, and the old City Hotel remains a regular stop on Savannah's many guided ghost walks, which are the easiest legal way to hear its stories told on the spot.

Sources

1. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Savannah, GA 1957 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1957 · Public domain (USGS)
2. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Savannah, SC 1942 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1942 · Public domain (USGS)
3. Ghost Adventures S2E7 "Moon River Brewing Company" — TheTVDB — TheTVDB
4. Haunted Historic Sites in Savannah — Legends of America — Legends of America
5. List of Ghost Hunters episodes — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
6. Official website
7. Philip Minis (physician), Wikipedia — Wikipedia
8. Savannah Hauntings at Moon River Brewing Co. — Visit Savannah (official tourism; poem by Christopher Soucy) — Visit Savannah (official tourism; poem by Christopher Soucy
9. Savannah's Moon River Brewing Company to close — Eat It and Like It (16 June 2024) — Eat It and Like It (16 June 2024
10. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.